The invention is directed to holders for surgical instruments and more specifically to holders which securely encase such instruments prior to disposal thereof.
Virtually every surgical procedure requires the use of small, sharp inplements such as suture needles, blades, staples, knives and the like. These instruments which are utilized in a sterile condition must be placed on a readily accessible sterile retainer during an operation to maintain the sterility of the operating area.
Secondly, instruments, such as needles, require a system for providing a strict and accurate accountability for each implement used. Thus, the operating nurse must have a reliable system for precisely determining how many instruments were used in surgery and for insuring that all such instruments have been accounted for before surgical closure of the patient.
Finally, many of these instruments are disposable and there is therefore a need for a safe, effective means to discard the instruments which may be contaminated with bacteria or virus after surgery without risking injury to operating room personnel.
Several disposable surgical instrument holders have been developed in the past. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,727,658 to Eldridge discloses a receiver for implements utilizing a plurality of magnets which are secured to the surface of a foldable, foamed, elastomeric backing sheet. U.S. Pat. No. 4,008,802 to Freitag discloses a needle retainer formed of a pad of resilient material having upstanding ridges through which needles are inserted. Each needle receiving zone is consecutively numbered to provide a method for maintaining an accurate count of the number of needles utilized during a surgical procedure. Although such devices are quite useful, the sharp instruments are exposed at the lateral edges of the devices when they are in a folded disposable condition. This is undesirable since the instruments may become detached and fall out of the device or possibly pierce or protrude through the assembly.
Attempts have been made to solve this problem by providing receivers which completely enclose the instruments. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,013,109 to Sandel discloses a disposable container formed from a non-deformable casing which has magnetic sheets covering the entire surfaces of both the upper and lower portions of the case. Although the instruments are enclosed, the container does not provide a count system for the sharp instruments, nor does it allow for visual inspection of the implements after the container is closed. U.S. Pat. No. 4,167,230 attempts to alleviate this problem by providing a transparent tray having a bottom whose upper surface is adapted to receive the surgical instruments. The cover of the tray nests above the bottom half and securely encloses the receiver. Although an improvement in some respects, the device provides only a solitary receiving surface. Such a device has a low instrument holding capacity. Since the devices are disposable, it is critical that they be manufactured and sold at low cost and provide the maximum implement holding capacity possible.
There is therefore a definite need for a device which completely encases the implements, provides an accurate counting system and permits viewing of the implements when the device is in its disposable configuration. Moreover, the device must provide maximum holding capacity and be manufactured at low cost.